An online commonplace book
The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
– Samuel Johnson, RAMBLER, No. 2
Johnson, Samuel. Samuel Johnson: Selected Works (The Yale Edition). Edited by Howard D. Weinbrot and Robert DeMaria Jr., Yale University Press, 2020 pg. 9
Write early in the morning, cultivate memory, reread core books, take detailed reading notes, work on several projects at once, maintain a thick archive, rotate crops, take a weekly Sabbath, go to bed at the same time, exercise so hard you can’t think during it, talk to different kinds of people including the very young and very old, take words and their histories seriously (i.e., read dictionaries), step outside of the empire of the English language regularly, look for vocabulary from other fields, love the basic, keep your antennae tuned, and seek out contexts of understanding quickly (i.e., use guides, encyclopedias, and Wikipedia without guilt).”
I’d add Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Perplexity.ai to without guilt list.
H/T Austin Kleon
Thank you for the correction. Here is the updated Chicago-style citation:
Hanrahan, Brían. “The Anthropoid Condition: An Interview with John Durham Peters.” Los Angeles Review of Books, July 10, 2015. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-anthropoid-condition-an-interview-with-john-durham-peters/.
I recall as a young boy owning some Willie Mays baseball cards. He simply seemed classier and more special than the other players, as if he had some magic, secret power that others did not.
– Tyler Cowen
GOAT.
Cowen, Tyler. “Thursday Assorted Links.” Marginal Revolution (blog). June 20, 2024. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/06/thursday-assorted-links-457.html.
Outlining is a fundamental of building.
Planning is a fundamental of doing, and outlining is a fundamental of planning.
– dnbt777
Eager to test this methodology out. Read the article in full below:
That the mind of man is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity; and that we forget the proper use of the time now in our power, to provide the enjoyment of that which, perhaps, may never be granted us, has frequently remarked; and as this practice is a commodious subject of raillery to the gay, and of declamation to the serious, it has been ridiculed with all the pleasantry of wit, and exaggerated with all the amplifications of rhetoric.
– Samuel Johnson, RAMBLER, No. 2
At last reading Dr. Johnson. Even in his age the idea of cherishing the present was an ongoing struggle.
The RAMBLER essays are an excellent entry point. They’re short but heavy.
Enjoy the dates on them too, this one from Saturday, 24 March 1750.
But there’s also no way to know how the modern major leagues would have adapted to him. We don’t know how good Mays would have been had he gotten to face the best players in the country his age, growing up competing at showcase events. We don’t know how much better he might have been had he not grown up in the Jim Crow South, had he not had to deal with the specter of racism his entire career, had he not had to fight against redlining even as a superstar living in San Francisco. We will never know how Willie Mays would have fared had he been born in our time because he was born in his time. And the impact he made during his time will live on forever.
What we do know is that no one who played against the best baseball players in the world ever dominated them as much as Mays did, for as long as Mays did, with as much style as Mays did. He was a giant of the game. He was the GOAT before we called them GOATs. He was the Greatest Ballplayer Who Ever Lived.
– Rany Jazayerli
RIP Willie Mays.
Rany Jazaerli poses the deeper question. It’s not how Willie Mays would have adapted to the modern major leagues, it’s how would the modern major leagues adapted to him?
Jazayerli, Rany. “Willie Mays Obituary: Life, Legacy, and Statistics.” The Ringer, June 19, 2024. https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2024/6/19/24181679/willie-mays-obituary-life-legacy-statistics.
As if in a dream, he found himself, somehow, seated in the driver’s seat; as if in a dream, he pulled the lever and swung the car round the yard and out through the archway; and, as in if in a dream, all sense of right and wrong, all fear of obvious consequences, seemed temporarily suspended. He increased his pace, and as the car devoured the street and leapt forth on the high road through the open country, he was only conscious that he was Toad once more, Toad at his best and highest, Toad the terror, the traffic queller, the Lord of the lone trail, before whom all must give way or be smitten into nothingness and everlasting night.
Kenneth Grahame’s repetition of the phrase “As if in a dream” has a poetic quality to it. Later it’s enhanced with the phrase Toad the terror, the traffic queller.
Poetry slipping into the prose is brilliant.
Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows. United Kingdom, Welbeck Editions, 2021. p111
He constantly replayed one of their last conversations, when the older man had told his son that if he really wished to become a scientific man–an “out-of-doors” naturalist, as Theodore put it–he could do so, but he must be sure that he “really intensively desired to do scientific work.” Roosevelt Sr. warned that Theodore “must not dream of taking it up as a dilettante.”
Remembering his father’s words, Roosevelt dealt with his grief by pushing himself, working to the limits of his physical and mental strength, burying himself in a steady stream of anatomy, botany, literature, and rhetoric. He declined every social call and made every effort to avoid the frothy amateurism that his father cautioned him against, “grinding like a Trojan” until he had passed all his exams.
Happy Father’s Day.
Lunde, Darrin. The Naturalist: Theodore Roosevelt, A Lifetime of Exploration, and the Triumph of American Natural History. United States, Crown, 2017. pg 73
It holds a personal memory for me; for, back in the 1970s, my father took me to see my first ever test match there. I loved everything about it: the excitement of the day out, the presence of a crowd gathering with rising expectation, all intent on one thing: the match itself, with the lightning excitement of each ball played, set within the longer and more leisurely rhythm of overs and innings. But what I most remember, looking back, what set the day apart, was that for the entire day I saw my father completely happy.
– Malcom Guite, on the Oval
Seeing your father completely happy is a rare thing. One that should always be documented.
Perfect timing from Malcom’s Poet’s Corner with the US upsetting Pakistan in the Cricket T20 World Cup.
Guite, Malcolm. “Poet’s Corner.” Church Times, 31 May 2024, https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2024/31-may/comment/columnists/malcolm-guite-poet-s-corner. Accessed 9 June 2024.
The ability to distinguish relevant from less relevant information is another skill that can only be learned by doing. It is the practice of looking for the gist and distinguishing it from mere supporting details. As we are forced to make this distinction when we read with a pen in our hand and write permanent note after permanent note, it is more than mere practice: it is deliberate practice repeated multiple times a day. Extracting the gist of a text or idea and giving an account in writing is for academics what daily practice on the piano is for pianists: The more often we do it and the more focused we are, the more virtuous we become.
Note-taking is thinking. A method and practice for helping one pay attention to the world.
Plan accordingly.
Ahrens, Sönke. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking. Germany, Sönke Ahrens, 2022. pg82
Floodlights and Goalposts 